


Pain pain (never again)

by ClaraCivry (Kat_Of_Dresden)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt Five comforting Hargreeves, Hurt Number Five | The Boy, Hurt/Comfort, Number Five gets some love and caring, Number Five | The Boy Whump, Poisoning, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love, Sickfic, Whump, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:33:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29273274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_Of_Dresden/pseuds/ClaraCivry
Summary: Regular timeline, after they save the world.Five gets anthrax poisoning. It's quite bad.Five whump with extra apocalypse flashback and extra extra caring/concerned Hargreeves.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Ben Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Diego Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & The Hargreeves (Umbrella Academy), Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 9
Kudos: 108





	Pain pain (never again)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a song by Glasvegas. Before Five found Dolores. Enjoy!

September 17, 2019

It was a little letter, simply addressed to Mr. Hargreeves, which was odd, but hey, a lot of things in their life were. When some white powder practically jumped at Five through some mechanism, he figured the letter was addressed to Klaus, and that this was some way to get him hooked to a new drug - maybe some dealer missed him, and thought this was a good way to get a good client back, even if he was sober, by not letting him say no.

But it was no drug dealer.

The next day, he started feeling worse.

_September 7, 2027_

_Every little breath hurts._

_Five (although it's been so long since anyone called him by his name, he writes it on books, on whatever pages he can find 5 5 5 Five 5 5 to try and not forget who he is) is trying to breathe, but it hurts. Badly._

_He's making awful raspy noises, he's been wheezing for days, maybe even weeks, and every time he gets less and less air, every time his chest hurts even worse and he's very very tired and getting weaker and weaker. Which he hates, because... he was going to... he was going to travel back and save everyone and them, and..._

_His mouth tastes like blood and ash and fire as he lays on the remnants of a basement, in too much pain to move, cold and ill, coughing up alone. How long has he been there? He can't tell, time has kind of... lost its meaning to him. He's going to turn it back, anyways, so it doesn't matter really how much time has passed, how much it has been._

_Although it feels like millennia._

_It feels like every second is stretched to infinity, because of the pain, because of the sheer power of the extremely flesh-eating and mind-eating loneliness._

_If there was someone.... Surely it would still hurt, yes, but... If there was someone...._

September 18, 2019

It kind of did hurt less.

"Allison and Vanya are following some new lead on who might have sent the poisonous letter, you know, in case they have an specific antidote or something, and I've got a couple of ghost informants looking for more info and Luther is breaking down some lab doors for "cutting-edge" cures. You know, the kind of cures they reserve for CIA and such - we're getting you that."

Klaus' voice was soothing, and distracted a bit from the pain. His chest was still screaming at him and breathing, even with the extra oxygen and all and all the meds was almost imposible, but Klaus' voice in the background did make things a bit better.

Ben was around too, quite often, with Klaus or without him, which Five didn't know if it was a good sign or not, but he was there, and he was telling him of all the ways in which he was going to be all right, scientifically, cases of miracle recoveries, efficiency rates of medication, how many of the strains were non-fatal... And when that got too old, he just remembered things they did together from when they were kids, and invented characters and entire worlds to escape their oppressing lives.

Coughing hurt the worst, it was as if his whole body, but specially his chest, were being torn to shreds, and he was feeling the pain from each cell that was torn apart, and then that multiplied, and then that accumulated. It was excruciating, and often times he found himself with tears in his eyes, coughing up blood, almost choking on it.

But....

Even through all of that, they made it better.

There was someone hushing him. Someone wiping his tears and blood, someone singing lullabies, someone putting a cool cloth on his forehead when he felt like he was burning from the inside out.

Diego had spent the whole previous night by his bedside, drawing little circles on Five's sweaty, pale hand, trying to get him out of nightmares, reassuring him. So that every time that he awoke disoriented from some fever-induced nightmare he wouldn't think that he was back in the past, or alone. Diego was there to calm him, remind him that he had people, make the pain a bit better.

The pain was almost unbearable, but.... he wanted to make it. For them.

_September 9th, 2027_

_Sometimes Five forgot what on earth is was holding on for._

_They.... they were a vague, distant memory, and the pain was everpresent, excruciating, unbearable. The pain, though, the pain was present in each second of his life, the pain ate away the present, the pain was all his future, it was all he knew, all he was. And all he would ever be, if he didn't do something._

_Five knew he was starving. He knew the signs by now, and being ill.... Well, if he didn't find some sustenance soon, he was not going to be able to make through this infection or whatever it was, which meant he wouldn't figure out how to go into the past, and save his family. And he had to do it._

_For them._

_But it was hard._

_He was an adult now, but growing up in a wasteland scavenging for remainders of anything edible hadn't made him the most sturdy one. He had good defences against extreme climate and air pollutants now, but didn't have very many energy reserves - fat was but a distant dream. He was fairly underweight for someone in his early twenties - just enough weight to survive._

_Make it to the next day, so he could continue calculating, finding a way to go back._

_But now.... now all of that was in danger, because of this illness, he'd been unable to move from that empty basement for days, and now he was unconscious more than he was awake, and getting more and more light-headed what short time he was awake...._

_He had to get up, though. Even if he had several fits between one step and the other, even if trying seemed useless, a lost cause. Even if he needed hours to move, and then he fell again. No, he needed to get out, he needed to make it, even if his bones were asking him to rest, to stay down._

_He needed to find food. Needed to make it._

_And maybe it would take days, and he didn't know if he had days, but..._

_For them._

_He would walk and try to survive until there was not a breath left in him._

_For them._

September 19, 2019

"I don't know what you feel you're able to keep down, so I brought you a bit of everything." Vanya's eyes were kind. They often were when she was looking at him, he who decided to save her life despite what she'd done, he who gave her a chance to start over in another time - he who helped her. Always. "There's water, of course, tea, some nice hot soup, a sandwich, some yoghurt, white rice... Klaus wanted to bring booze too, but you shouldn't be drinking even when you're healthy, so... Where do we start? Do you think you can manage some soup?"

The meds were slowing down the decline a bit, but he was still getting worse. That was all the CIA magical cure could do, just slow down the whole thing. Diego broke the jaw of the scientist that told them there was nothing more to be done, good thing Allison was there too, to make him forget. Although she did fell the temptation to rough him up a bit too, for daring to say that Five was not going to make it.

So yeah, it still hurt like hell, and keeping awake was becoming more and more of a challenge. But the moments he was awake...

"I'll... try."

The moments he was awake, he wasn't alone, he wasn't dying just to try and make it to the next day.

He had voices around him and kind eyes, and shushing and songs and stories. Luther cleaning his face, Klaus laying down next to him telling him anecdotes, Allison asking him to keep on fighting. They are... their faces, their voices and all the little and bigger things that they were doing for him, they were more present, and more important than the pain.

The scientists could say whatever they wanted, tell them that he was supposed to be dead already, that there was no hope. But he was not giving up, not while they were around, not while he was making someone happy.

"Good... soup." he said, in between wheezes, and Vanya lit up.

"I'm glad you like it! Ben and Diego helped, but it was mostly me, no matter what they say. I kind of remembered from when we were kids that you used to love having bits of bread in it and I didn't know if you still would, but I... I'm really glad you like it."

There was a chance that this still could take his life. Despite his stubbornness, inhaled anthrax was mostly fatal, and he was in a tiny body that couldn't disease as well as an older one could. And despite his siblings best intentions, the severity of this attack might be too much.

Still, if he had to go... These didn't seem like some bad last moments.

_September 15, 2027_

_He's made it, somehow._

_Found some water, some tinned meat, some bugs._

_He's still coughing practically every hour, but at least there are some little moments in which he can breathe almost normally. It's still hard to think, his head swimming from the unrelenting fever that has broken, but it's still there, making everything fuzzy._

_But in some days, he'll be able to think again, to go back to his mission, to...._

_He's been through so much, he just wants... He wants someone to tell him he did good, he wants a hug from his mom, he wants so very badly to have someone with him, to give him some strength, to help him focus again._

_The aching in his lungs is not so bad now...._

_But as he looks around him, to miles and miles and miles of desolated nothingness, ruins of what once life was... Well, the pain on his chest only gets worse._

September 22nd, 2019

Big blue eyes opened, after being closed for days, and the first thing they saw...

Them.

Vanya and Diego were crying tears of joy, Klaus was applauding like a little kid, Luther and Allison had joyful expression, kept saying "I can't believe it" and "We knew you could it" and nonsensical sentences like that. They seemed about to cry, too, as if the most wonderful event if their lives had happened, as if the lottery and the saving of the world had a baby, that level of happiness.

"What... happened?" Five asked Ben, who also seemed about to explode from joy, but seemed a bit less speechless than some of the others, just looking at Five, perched on the side of the bed, with a fond smile.

"You went into a coma. We thought we had lost you for good."

He was hooked to IVs, the nasal cannula still under his nose, and the room was a bit still too hot.

And yet, looking at the faces of his siblings, hearing them say how happy they were that he was back, seeing the joy in their faces...

Pain was in the past.

For so long, he clinged to the tiniest of hopes, for so long logic and the world around kept screaming that life was never going to be better, that pain and loneliness were all that was destined for him. For so long he had cried, but still endured, because against all odds, he wanted to see them again, he wanted to save them.

And what felt like an impossible dream, more and more unreachable as each day, week, year, decade passed, what he was almost completely certain he wouldn't live to see... It had happened.

He had saved them, and they had saved him.

From death, from loneliness.

From pain.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you liked!
> 
> You know what you wanna dooooo... comment!
> 
> (Your comments are my lifeline no joke)


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